Tel Aviv stocks open Tuesday with mild drops

Tel Aviv stocks are down 0.6% early in the Tuesday session after rising 0.7% right at opening. The opening gains were associated with Monday's gains on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones climbed 1.44% and Nasdaq gained 1.53%. But ongoing regional violence is providing a negative counterforce.

The Maof-25 blue chip index is down 0.8% to 429.6 points and the TA-100 index is off 0.3% to 413.4 points. Technology shares are rising 0.6%. Total turnover is low at NIS 45 million.

Teva Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:TEVA) is rising 1.5% on the session's biggest turnover NIS 5.5 million. Teva opened with 1.8% positive arbitrage spread after gaining 1.8% on Nasdaq. The gains are related to Teva's Monday announcement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted it tentative approval for Quinapril HCL 5, 10, 20 and 40 milligram tablets. This is the first FDA tentative approval for Quinapril. The drug is the generic version of Parke Davis' Accupril for treating hypertension. Annual sales of the original drug come to $500 million.

Koor Industries (NYSE:KOR) is off 4.6% and Clal Industries is down 2.1%. The drops are attributed to affiliate ECI Telecom (Nasdaq:ECIL) plunging 16% on Nasdaq on Monday. ECI reported $232.8 million revenue for Q4, 11% less than in Q3. Revenue was 7% less than the average estimate. Net loss came to $43.1 million. Yesterday, Koor dropped 3.8% and Clal Industries closed down 2%

Bank Discount is down 0.1% on big turnover of NIS 4.1 million after opening with 1.8% gains. The lively action is attributed to TheMarker report on Monday that the bank is planning a Nasdaq IPO of its wholly-owned subsidiary Israel Discount Bank of New York. Leader DS estimated that the New York branch is worth at least $400 million.